Interesting Facts about Space

I want to linger here in the in-between, half-made, in some permanent adolescence, forever. I don't ever want to become my full self.

I worry that I am a shell for something bad. That deep down, in the spot where most people keep their souls, I keep a weird little bug. I picture him there, leaning on the apple core of my soul, crunching on what remains of what’s good of me.

I hate my voice. I hate the words I choose. I hate my instincts and the way I think. I hate that I am self-absorbed enough to hate myself in detail. I think I am a bad person. I feel self-loathing so deeply I think if I cracked myself open, I would see the physical manifestation of it calcified in my bones like a geode.

I have worked on myself since being a kid. I now carry myself, for the most part, like I am socially apt and confident. ... I started mimicking the behavior of confident people when I was a teenager, and I have worn that mask so long now that my face is melding with it. There are parts of me I wish I could train out that I can't. You can train a dog not to bite, sit on the furniture, or piss in the house, but you can't train them to become birds. ... I feel self-loathing so deeply I think if I cracked myself open, I would see the physical manifestation of it calcified in my bones like a geode.

It’s actually sort of soothing to think of how massive the universe is, and how I could be snuffed out at any minute. I guess I like tricking my brain into disarming things.

There is something soothing about being rejected. It really anchors you in your body. It feels like a bath.

I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.

I struggle to stomach sincerity, or to express any authentic emotion, because everything feels insincere when you suspect that deep down, in the chasm of yourself, the most sentient part of you is a little ill-intentioned monster. I feel like a husk, like I am being gradually taken over, and that all my feelings and thoughts are tampered with. I am nervous when I interact with people like Edna. I don't want to expose her to Plankton. I think there have been times in the past where he took me over completely.

But there are some fears that are rational. It’s reasonable to be afraid of murder, or to feel troubled about existing as a speck on a space rock floating in colossal, silent darkness. Those are rational fears. They’re both fears that can’t really be faced. How am I supposed to cope with fears like that? I thought the only option was to be delusional. I thought everyone coped by imagining reality isn’t what it is—by ignoring the threat of murder, or by forgetting we’re in space—or by doing what I do. By repeatedly exposing yourself until the threats feel familiar, the shock wears off, and you’ve conditioned yourself to find what scares you pacifying.

Sometimes, when things are broken, I find they fix themselves if you just pretend that they are fine and give them time.

She just confidently asked a waitress for something. It takes me 5 minutes or more of mentally reciting what I will say before I even look at a waitress. I once ate an entire rack of ribs when I had ordered a tomato sandwich.

I can tell that I wouldn’t be attracted to him, but that is true of every man except for a few very specific celebrities, and some fictional male characters who were written by women.

We are going to watch a scary movie. I felt like watching something frightening so I could exert power over it. I want to eat popcorn while I watch it and laugh while it tries to scare me.

I walk into his office, ready to greet George, and scream. George is bald.

The thing is,” child-me continues, “ghosts aren’t any more scary than people are. Think about it. Ghosts just used to be people. Some people are really scary, like murderers, and bullies.

I am thinking about how everyone's behavior is motivated by many secret things. I know there are reasons why people do things that I am not in on. I know I am not the center of the universe. The sun does not revolve around me. There are lots of questions I will never know the answers to. ... Maybe everything I think is wrong.

Whenever I see my mom watching her food cook in the oven, I sit next to her and look in. You can't kill yourself in modern ovens. Well, I'm sure you could. You could kill yourself with anything if you tried hard enough. When we sit there, though, I feel like we are moths drawn to the memory of what an oven can do to sad women.

Sometimes, when I have a nice interaction with someone, I hope I never see them again. Occasionally, I have a nice chat with a cashier, for example. I leave the store thinking, I hope I never see them again. I avoid their register if I do. Sometimes, when I visit extended family, like my mom's cousins, or a great aunt, I think it's a shame they saw me now at my age. I think it might have been better for them to have last seen me as a kid. I think seeing me now might ruin the memory of when I was little. I often stop texting people I'm seeing after having a nice time with them. I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.

When stars fall into black holes, they seem to do it slowly. Because of gravitational time dilation, they look as if they are paused. If a person were to fall into a black hole, they would be spaghettified; however, to anyone watching, they would look as if they didn’t fall.

I will never understand how my dad could stand in the glow of my mom, as if an inch from a star, and be unmoved by her formidable light.

I spent a lot of time growing up trying to seem normal. Sometimes I worry I neglected doing the internal work most people do while they’re developing; I was too preoccupied camouflaging. I think I might be stunted because of it. I think I missed a step.

You know.” She leans back in her chair. “One thing I always tell my patients is that everyone can say it could have been worse. Don’t diminish the parts of your childhood that were difficult because they were comparatively better than others.

I often don’t want to know the truth because I’m worried that it will reveal something I won’t be able to handle. I think that I would rather be ignorant, but maybe that’s wrong. When I’m ignorant, I start thinking I’m crazy. I repress that I start fires and I become neurotic. I am so worried that I am a bad person. I am afraid of facing that possibility. But I think, if I were a good person, I would face it. Good people want to know what they did wrong.

I doubt it's possible to have a baby and not imagine what you want for it. If I were to ever fall pregnant, I would wonder what the sex of the baby is. Celebrations that center expectations around gender depress me, though. I don't think I am what someone would envision if they cut into a cake and saw pink. If I saw photos of my mom, teary-eyed at the thought of me being a girl, I would feel even more guilty for being born the way I am.

I hate being startled. I prefer controlled forms of fear. I like my podcasts, horror movies, and ghost stories that I can pause and rewind. I handle fear sort of like a warhorse. I could charge bravely into a planned battle, take in the sights of bombs and corpses, but I would still be spooked by an unanticipated barn rat.

do not know why we assume attractive people are less likely to be killers, anyways. In my experience, good-looking people are more likely to be depraved.

I do a lot of online dating though, and I rarely even meet in public. That safety protocol is more applicable to straight women. One of the perks of being a lesbian is that it is less critical for me to vet whether my date will kill me.

I think that if there were no one else alive I wouldn’t clean my house. I would pile garbage everywhere. I would collect wrappers, acorns, and rocks, and hoard them around me like a dirty little ferret. If I existed alone, I doubt I would wash my hair. I would shave my head. I would perch on a hill of my own trash, naked.

I wear the mask of a well mannered distant relative. A young lady who crosses her legs at the ankles and laughs at banal jokes. That is a new character for me however. I have not mastered her yet. I have grasped the characters; enigmatic temporary love interest, reliable employee, my mother's aidful daughter, unobjectionable patron at a store or restaurant. In the past I learned to play shy teenage girl, tidy roommate, and diligent student through some trial and error, but those roles are behind me now, thank god.